Former FIFA president, Sepp Blatter, was paid $3.76 million in 2015, according to the Financial and Governance Report issued by world football’s governing body.
The results showed FIFA reported a loss of $122m as a number of key sponsors deserted it during a scandal-ridden year.
It is the first time FIFA has recorded a loss since 2002, although much of the focus from the results is sure to focus on the organisation’s disgraced former leader.
Blatter was succeeded as FIFA president by Gianni Infantino in the election at last month’s Extraordinary Congress in Zurich, with the 80-year-old Swiss having been suspended on full pay last October in relation to a payment made to his then-UEFA counterpart Michel Platini in 2011.
The duo were banned from all football-related activities for eight years in December – punishments trimmed to six years last month – and Blatter joined Platini in taking an appeal against his punishment to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) earlier on Thursday.
Blatter previously resisted publishing his personal earnings during a 17-year tenure but his income was detailed on page 63 of the report on account of it being “the highest remuneration to a member of the Executive Committee in the year 2015”.
He earned a base salary of 2.96m Swiss francs, approximated $3m, and his remaining income was considerably bolstered by a “variable compensation” payment of CHF435,000.
The same page showed former general secretary Jerome Valcke, who is now banned from football for 12 years due to several breaches of FIFA regulations, earned CHF2.2m to be the best paid senior management figure.
FIFA’s $1.274billion expenses, outstripping income of $1.152bn in 2015, included $62m spending on “legal matters”, while the FIFA reserve fund fell by $183m to $1.34bn.
In his opening statement to the report, Infantino said: “2015 was an incredibly tough year for FIFA, and one that will take some time and collective hard work to fully recover from. The challenges of the past 12 months are reflected in our financial results for the year.
“These results stand as a cautionary tale of what can happen if we lose sight of the primary responsibilities of our mission, and if we fail to take the necessary steps to protect our organisation against wrongdoing.
“It is to the credit of the decent majority within the organisation that we acted together, in these difficult times, to limit the damage and to secure the future of FIFA.
“FIFA’s healthy financial reserves, built up when the sun was shining as a prudent insurance against unforeseen risks, have served to further stabilise the organisation, and to give us the breathing space we need to put things right.
This strong financial position overall means we are more than capable of weathering the current storm.”
